[Mark Twain Mysteries 02] - A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court

by Peter J. Heck

  “Love potion!” said Cable. He rubbed his hands together. “Those herb doctors often put jimsonweed in their love potions. Isn’t that true, Eulalie?”

  “Yes,” said Eulalie Echo, nodding. “Women buy those potions when they think their man has stopped loving them. You understand, this isn’t a potion to make a person fall in love; it is a strong aphrodisiac. Sometimes it makes a man regain his vigor as a lover; sometimes, if it is too strong, it poisons him. Either way, the woman often thinks she is better off than before.”

  Mr. Clemens frowned. “But this was a man buying the potions.”

  “Yes, that is unusual,” said Eulalie Echo. “It is almost always women who buy them to give to their men. Men don’t like to admit that they need any such assistance.”

  “I can’t help noticing that the description of the customer fits Reynold Holt,” said Mr. Cable.

  “And a few hundred other men in New Orleans,” said the detective, tapping his pencil on the table. “Unless we find the right herb doctor and get him to identify a white man who bought a love potion a month ago, that description won’t take us very far. And that’s a thousand to one against, in my opinion. I’ve never known an herb doctor who wanted to answer questions from a detective.”

  “Can you blame them?” said Buddy Bolden. He pointed at the detective. “I wouldn’t be real quick to talk to you if I’d been selling poison on the street. I might make myself real hard to find, if I heard there was a cop asking questions about that stuff.”

  “That’s not the only problem,” said Mr. Clemens, rubbing his mustache with a forefinger. “Even if we could prove the buyer was looking for a love potion, even if he specified that he wanted jimsonweed in it, how could he know it was strong enough to kill a man? All we could really prove is accidental poisoning.”

  “That still might be enough to get Leonard Galloway out of jail,” said Mr. Cable. “All we have to do is raise a reasonable doubt. If it could have been an accident, they won’t hold him.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that,” said Mr. Clemens, with a shake of his head. “Holt was talking up a racial conspiracy; said it was time to make an example of somebody to keep the colored folks in their place. And I get the feeling some of the people in power would agree with him. I want to get Leonard out before they get a notion to take things in their own hands. And that’ll take more than a reasonable doubt; we’ll have to prove beyond doubt that somebody else did it.”

  “Which we’re nowhere near,” said LeJeune. His frustration was obvious. “I’m pretty sure that Leonard is innocent, myself. But Mr. Clemens is right: there’s a lot of feeling against the colored folks these days. A judge isn’t likely to let Leonard free without a confession from someone else or some other proof that Leonard couldn’t have done it. And I don’t see where that’s going to come from, short of a miracle.”

  “Well, I can’t conjure up a miracle, but we have somebody here who might be able to,” said Mr. Clemens, looking at Eulalie Echo.

  “Are you referring to me?” said Eulalie. For the first time I saw a surprised look on her face. “Really, Mr. Clemens, I do have certain abilities, but I cannot create miracles to order.”

  Mr. Clemens stood up, leaning his jaw on his right fist, a pose I’d often seen him adopt at his lectures. “All right, not a miracle, but perhaps a confession. Cable tells me that Maria Staunton is greatly distressed about her husband’s death. Is that right, George?”

  “It certainly is,” said Mr. Cable. “She finds it most disturbing that he died still believing her to have been unfaithful. She kept saying that she wished she had been able to talk to Percy one more time.”

  “Well, if I could talk to him one more time, I’d be asking him who gave him the poison,” said LeJeune with a scornful expression. “Not that I’d have any chance of getting it into evidence. Maybe dead men can tell tales, but you can’t get judges to pay them any mind.”

  “And with good reason,” said Eulalie. “A liar in life will be a liar after death, from what I have seen.”

  “That should hardly surprise anybody,” said Mr. Clemens. “But let’s look at the evidence. The poisoner, whoever it is, appears to have used a voodoo love potion; that suggests that whoever it is might also believe in voodoo charms and magic and other kinds of superstition, no slight intended.” He nodded toward Eulalie Echo, who nodded back, a tight-lipped smile on her face. Her arms were folded across her breast, and she was clearly weighing his words carefully.

  Mr. Clemens continued. “Also, we have reason to believe that Robinson and Staunton were both having difficulties in their marriages, and I’d guess the poisoner used that fact to persuade both of them to try the potion. You could argue that Robinson might have taken the stuff unwittingly, but after the first poisoning, Staunton would have been on his guard against anything with an off taste. Unless he ignored the taste because he believed that he was taking some kind of medicine.”

  “Are you accusing old Doc Soupape?” asked LeJeune. “He was the one who ordered the autopsy of Robinson to begin with. Why would he do that if he was the poisoner?”

  “To deflect suspicion, maybe,” said Mr. Clemens. “He’s not the only suspect, though. A man will take medicine from his doctor, his wife, a servant, a nurse, even a close friend. The man who asked Anderson about herb doctors was probably Reynold Holt, the victims’ brother-in-law. But Tom Anderson himself might have suggested a love potion if Robinson or Staunton confided that they were having troubles at home; from what Buddy says, they were both regular patrons. And we can’t forget some of the old family friends: Dupree, or maybe even Professor Maddox.”

  Detective LeJeune grimaced. “Hey, Mr. Clemens, this is all backward. We ought to be narrowing down the list of suspects, and here you go making it longer again.”

  Mr. Clemens nodded. “Yes, because if we do what I have in mind, we can’t leave out any logical suspect.” He stood for a moment, surveying the little group. “LeJeune, you said that a confession would be the best way to set Leonard Galloway free. Well, I’ve got an idea how to get the real killer to confess. But I’ll need your help, LeJeune, and Eulalie’s, especially. Here’s my plan. . . .”

  Mr. Clemens spoke for perhaps fifteen minutes, with frequent interruptions, from both LeJeune and Eulalie Echo. But at last they both agreed to the plan. “I guess this has as much chance of working as anything else we’ve got,” said LeJeune. “But I’ll be damned if I know how I’m going to explain this to my chief.”

  “Don’t explain it at all,” said Mr. Clemens. “If it doesn’t work, he doesn’t even have to know we tried it. And if it does, he’ll have his case solved, and I doubt he’ll have any objections to how you did it.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said the detective. “Because if it doesn’t work, I’m going to have Leonard Galloway’s hanging on my conscience.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Mr. Cable, picking up his hat from the bed where he’d left it. “After all, you’re still doing your regular detective work—things like searching this apartment. Go ahead and carry on with your investigation while we’re setting this up, and there’s a good chance you might find the killer that way. If you’ve done that to the best of your ability, there’s nobody who can find fault with you for trying something less conventional, even if it falls short.”

  LeJeune shook his head wearily. “Nobody but myself. But that’s a burden I’d gladly do without.”

  “There’s only one thing more useless than crying over spilt milk,” said Mr. Clemens, “and that’s crying over milk that’s still in the cow. If we find the murderer, nobody’s going to hang Leonard at all.”

  27

  The next few days were very busy. Mr. Clemens was preparing his plan to solve the murders of Robinson and Staunton, and he continued to work on his book about our trip down the Mississippi. He also kept up a lively correspondence, not only with his wife and daughters in Austria, but with literary friends across the country and overseas. And, of course, he was scheduled t
o deliver two lectures in New Orleans over the coming weekend. He had prepared and rehearsed for the lectures before setting out on the present tour, but still he spent some time polishing and adding finishing touches for these performances.

  Unlike most of the lecturers I had seen at Yale, Mr. Clemens disliked reading from a written text. Instead, he preferred to give the appearance of an impromptu performance, although his apparently casual delivery was achieved only at the cost of extensive rehearsal. “It takes me the better part of three weeks to get ready for an impromptu lecture,” he told me, and to judge from what I had seen, he did not exaggerate.

  There were plenty of other things on his mind. Even on Friday night, in his dressing room, he spent an inordinate amount of time grousing about having pledged his lecture fees as surety for my remaining within Judge Fogarty’s jurisdiction. A bailiff had been waiting at the theater even as we arrived, and had stationed himself in the theater manager’s office to await the box office receipts. Mr. Clemens was particularly annoyed at this imposition, because it seemed clear that everyone in New Orleans except the judge himself had discarded the theory that I had any responsibility for Percival Staunton’s death.

  “You’d think that blamed judge would listen to his own police force,” he growled, pausing to put out his cigar—he never smoked onstage. “Even that rascal Holt has figured out that you didn’t have any real chance to give Staunton a dose of poison. And you were halfway up the river when Robinson got killed, but Fogarty can’t grasp that point. It’s about what you’d expect from a legal system that thinks the way to find the truth is to appoint a jury made up of a dozen illiterates who don’t know anything and care about even less.”

  “Well, I can hardly take Fogarty’s side in this,” I said, “but I think you underestimate American justice. Is there a fairer system anywhere in the world?”

  “Spoken like a lawyer’s son,” said Mr. Clemens, plopping himself in the dressing room chair. He took one last look in the mirror and straightened his tie. “I’m tempted to test your faith by refusing to fork over my lecture fees and seeing if Fogarty chunks you back in jail. I’d try it in a moment, but I reckon I’ll need your help for the show out by the bayou tomorrow night.”

  “I appreciate your restraint,” I said. “Perhaps I ought to skip town and leave Fogarty holding your money. Turnabout’s fair play, they tell me.”

  Mr. Clemens chuckled. “You’d be better off taking your chances with Fogarty than fooling with me; the judge may have the law on his side, but I have no conscience whatsoever, and therefore nothing to stop me from taking revenge on you. Besides, you can’t leave town yet. You’d miss the greatest dramatic production since the Royal Nonesuch.”

  “Very well, I shall stay. But only if you promise not to let them arrest me again.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Mr. Clemens. “I need you way too much to let them haul you off. Even if it means I have to wait a little longer to get hold of my hard-earned lecture fees. Speaking of which, what does the house look like?”

  “Filling up very nicely,” I told him. I had peeked at the audience not fifteen minutes before, and already there was barely a seat unoccupied.

  “Good. There’s no such thing as too big an audience, at least as long as it’s a paying audience.” He glanced at his watch. “I guess you’d best get on out front if you don’t want somebody else to grab your seat, then. The trouble is supposed to start in five minutes.”

  I made it out front in time to claim my seat, two-thirds of the way back in the hall, which by now was standing-room only. As usual, the boxes were filled with ladies and gentlemen dressed in the height of fashion, while the denizens of the cheap seats looked as if they might be more at home at a mule race than at a literary evening. A thick pall of tobacco smoke hung over the auditorium, and a buzz of excited conversation filled the air. From what I overheard, the first New Orleans appearance by Mark Twain in many years seemed to have gained an air of notoriety in the wake of my arrest for dueling and Mr. Clemens’s appearance before the judge to plead on my behalf. I was glad that none of the newspapers that reported on that episode had been able to get an accurate drawing of me into their accounts of my day in court.

  At the designated hour, Mr. Clemens made his customary entrance, ambling onstage so unobtrusively that a good portion of the audience would undoubtedly have missed it had not the few who were paying attention greeted him with applause, which swelled to a crescendo as he slowly made his way to the front of the stage.

  Mr. Clemens bowed and waited for the applause to subside, then began to speak in a quiet voice, so slowly that he seemed to come to a full stop after every word. As I have said, his lectures were carefully rehearsed, and in the main identical from one performance to the next; but he liked to open each appearance with a sort of prelude tailored to the local audience, and I was curious to see what he would have to say about New Orleans, especially in view of the audience’s probable familiarity with the newspaper stories.

  “It’s been a long time since I was in New Orleans,” he began. “For the most part, things haven’t changed. Neither the city, nor the people, nor the food, which is as delightful as some of the minor varieties of sin. In fact, I’d be willing to take my chances in Hades if I knew that pompano was on the menu. It stands to reason they’ve got plenty of your Creole peppers down there, and several sweet old ladies who’d turn up their toes and die before they told a fib have told me that whisky is the devil’s invention, so I reckon they’ve got plenty of that. So all I need to learn about for sure is the pompano. Most of my old friends will be there, anyhow, so I’m assured of good company.

  “I’ve enjoyed your Louisiana hospitality before, but for this visit, I brought along my secretary, Cabot, a young fellow from Connecticut who’s seeing your city for the first time. Cabot’s a Yankee. I reckon he can’t help that, but that hasn’t stopped him from getting into the spirit of things and acting like a true Southerner, born and bred. Not many places would have made a stranger feel as welcome, and as much like one of its own, as New Orleans has my Yankee secretary. Why, he hadn’t been here a week before one of your leading citizens challenged him to a duel!

  “Now, I suppose I should have warned him against that particular southern custom, but I’d been away from the South so long that it slipped my mind. It may seem an innocent sport, like shooting at newspaper editors, but in my opinion dueling’s too dangerous to undertake without due advice and preparation. I’ve never been in favor of strenuous outdoor exercise, other than smoking cigars, you understand. And of course, the advantage of cigars is that you can smoke them indoors, as well. But dueling almost always takes place outdoors, and first thing in the morning, too. Why, a fellow could catch his death of cold unless he wraps himself up warmly. That’s why I don’t hold with dueling.

  “Now, just in case you think I’m speaking out of ignorance and prejudice, you ought to know that I once challenged a fellow to a duel myself. This was in Nevada, back in the mining days, and I sent my challenge before I remembered I didn’t know how to shoot a pistol. Then I found out the other fellow was a crack shot. So the day before the fracas was scheduled, I went out to get some practice, and he did the same—just over the hill from where I was. I fired off five or six rounds without hitting anything smaller than a church, and then one of my seconds decided to show me how it was done. Well, his first shot took the head off a little bird at about thirty yards’ distance, and it just so happened that somebody from the other party saw it. They made the mistake of assuming I’d fired the shot, and I wasn’t such a fool as to go and set them right. The other fellow promptly declined to fight me on any terms whatsoever. That was the triumphal end of my dueling career. I left town on the next stage, and except for slaughtering my enemies in imagination and in print, I have been a peaceful man ever since.”

  When Mr. Clemens had begun, I was worried about the New Orleans crowd’s response to this subject, especially in light of the duel’s end, with the demise of
a son of Louisiana. And I was just as glad that the auditorium was dark, so that none of the crowd could observe my blushing during his references to me, and guess my identity. But I went unrecognized, and by the time Mr. Clemens finished his preamble, the crowd was convulsed with laughter. Shortly after, he returned to his prepared script, and I settled back to observe the rest of the lecture, which, much to my relief, went like clockwork.

  * * *

  At the end of the lecture, I stood and joined the crowd in applauding my employer. Then I began to pick a path through the crowd, heading toward the entrance to the backstage area, where I knew I would find Mr. Clemens holding court to a large group of visitors outside his dressing room door. If this audience was anything like the others on the current tour, the listeners would include everyone from important local dignitaries to barely reputable characters who claimed to be intimate friends with “good ol’ Sam”—and in fact, sometimes had been, in his riverboat and frontier days.

  I had just about reached the front of the house when a soft hand fell on my elbow and a woman’s voice said, “Mr. Cabot! I am glad to see you are none the worse for the unfortunate events the other day.”

  I turned to see who it was, somewhat apprehensive in view of my name’s having been mentioned from the stage that same evening. It was none other than Mrs. Eugenia Robinson, wearing a plain dark dress, which managed to convey the impression of mourning while not seeming entirely out of place at a theater. She was accompanied by her brother, Mr. Holt, who was doing his best to pretend not to notice me, and by Mr. Dupree. “Good evening,” I said, removing my hat. “I hope you enjoyed the lecture.”

  “Yes, I did,” she said. “Maria had bought tickets when Mr. Clemens’s lecture was announced, but of course she is in mourning now. I thought it would be a shame to let the tickets go to waste, and so I got Reynold and Gordon to bring me. I’m glad I did; even Reynold seemed to enjoy himself more than usual, didn’t you?” She turned to her brother, smiling, and he nodded glumly and muttered something that passed for agreement, although he still did not meet my eye.